I love the idea of acting locally and have done it (and written and spoken about it) for decades. My biggest success in 50 years as an activist was a local campaign that saved a threatened mountain. Your chances of winning are often higher, it’s easy to reach those most affected, and you can parley your success into much greater influence on the future direction of your community. And yes, it can be empowering.
BUT…we also have to do the long, hard work on the big-picture stuff. It took 100 years of hard organizing to end legalized slavery for non-criminals in the US (and by the way, the exemption for convicted criminals has been used shamefully in too many instances). It took decades to get national civil rights legislation, the right of women and people of color to vote, the right of same-sex couples to marry…pretty much anything worth fighting for. And sometimes, even large-scale victories happen surprisingly quickly. As an example, the safe energy movement took only five or six years to make nuclear power unbuildable.
And those local victories can inspire the national and international work–which often gets done most effectively at the local level, by existing organizations and coalitions.
Guest Post by Sam Horn, author of Tongue Fu and many other books.
Does it feel like you’re talking on eggshells these days? You’re not alone. A report from McKinsey says, “Rudeness is on the rise and incivility is getting worse.”
As one woman said, “It feels like I can’t say anything right. It seems everyone’s on edge. They take offense at the least little thing. What can we do when everyone’s stressed out?”
She has a point, doesn’t she?
The last year and a half has been tough.
People have lost loved ones and jobs. Controversies around masks and vaccinations have put people at odds. Remote work and home-schooling have frayed nerves and tempers.
So, what can we do? We can Tongue Fu!
Tongue Fu! (a trademarked communication – conflict prevention/resolution process) teaches what to say – and not say – in sensitive, stressful situations you face every day.
It’s ironic. We’re taught math, science and history in school, we’re not taught how to deal with difficult people without becoming one ourselves.
And in these tough times, it’s more important than ever to know how to proactively handle complaints, disagreements, and unhappy, upset people.
Fortunately, that’s what Tongue Fu! teaches.
Here are a few challenges you may face at work, at home, online and in public – with tips on how to respond in the moment instead of thinking of the perfect response on the way home.
4 Tongue Fu! Tips for What to Say/Do When Things Go Wrong
Complaints When people complain, don’t explain. Explanations come across as excuses. They make people angrier because they feel you’re not being accountable. For example, if a host is upset because you’re late for a meeting, don’t explain why, just take the AAA Train:
Agree: “You’re right, Bob, our meeting was supposed to start at 9 am.
Apologize: And I’m sorry I’m late.
Act: AND I’ve got those stats you had requested. Would you like to hear them?”
When you take the AAA Train – Agree, Apologize and Act – instead of belaboring why things went wrong, you advance the conversation instead of anchoring it in an argument.
2. Negative accusation.
Whatever you do, don’t defend or deny untrue accusations. If someone says “You are so emotional!” and you say, “I am not emotional!” now you are! Instead, put the ball back in their court by asking, “What do you mean?” That questions motivates people to reveal the real issue and you can address that instead of reacting to their attack.
Imagine says, “You don’t care about your customers.” Reacting with, “We do care about our customers.” makes them wrong. Instead ask, “Why do you say that?” The client may say “I ordered supplies two weeks ago and still haven’t received them.” Now you know what’s really bothering them and you can fix their problem instead of debating their accusation.
3. Arguments.
If people are upset and you try to talk over them, what will happen? They’ll talk louder. The voice of reason will get drowned out in the commotion.
Instead, make a T with your hands (like a referee would) to cause a pause. Then say these magic words, “Let’s not do this. We could go back and forth for the rest of the afternoon about what should have been done, and it won’t undo what happened. Instead, let’s put a system in place to prevent this from happening again.”
You can also put your hand up like a traffic cop to do a pattern interrupt. Say, “Blaming each other won’t help. Instead, let’s figure out who will be in charge of this in the future so we can trust it will be handled promptly.”
As John F. Kennedy said, “Our goal is not to fix blame for the past, it’s to fix the course for the future.” If people start blaming, remind them, “We’re here to find solutions, not fault.”
4. Have to give bad news.
It’s easy to get defensive if your have to give bad news and say “It’s not my fault,” however that makes people feel you’re brushing them off.
A more empathetic response is to say “I can only imagine” as in ‘I can only imagine how disappointing this is.”
Then turn, “There’s nothing I can do” into “There’s something I can suggest. We have set up a 24 hour job-line with…”
In the real world, things go wrong. And sometimes we can’t fix them. We can at least let people know we care and we’re doing the best we can to help out.
Don Draper said, “If you don’t like what’s being said, change the conversation.”
We can change conversations and outcomes for good by using Tongue Fu! approaches.
Because when we treat people with respect, they’re more likely to treat us with respect.
And that’s a win for everyone.
This post originally appeared in Sam Horn’s newsletter and LinkedIn. Reprinted with permission. Sam’s 3 TEDx talks and 9 books have been featured in NY Times, on NPR, and taught to Intel, Cisco, Boeing, Capital One, NASA, Fidelity and Oracle. Want support completing your creative projects? Check out Sam’s Stop Wishing – Start Writing Community.
It covers a lot of ground: optimism, hope, organizing mass movements, climate justice, the role of indigenous people in todays struggles, and much more. I found it well-worth the 15 minutes or so it took to read the whole thing.
Three short excerpts from this long article:
1] I have often met people who think the time I have spent around progressive movements was pure dutifulness or dues-paying, when in fact it was a reward in itself – because to find idealism amid indifference and cynicism is that good.
2] [Halting the Keystone XL pipeline] was not a gift from Biden; it was a debt being paid to the climate activists who had made it an important goal. Patience counts, and change is not linear. It radiates outward like ripples from a stone thrown into a pond. It matters in ways no one anticipates. Indirect consequences can be some of the most important ones. [She goes on to trace the Standing Rock movement and AOC’s decision to run for Congress to earlier struggles that appeared, in the moment, to fail. These types of indirect sparks to deep change are something I’ve often written and spoken about, including this post about how one environmental justice action changed the world.]
3] We have victories. Some of them are very large, and are why your life is the shape it is. The victories are reminders that we are not powerless, and our work is not futile. The future is not yet written, but by reading the past, we see patterns that can help us shape that future.
One small quibble: while I agree with Solnit that individual lifestyle changes are far less consequential than mass organizing, and that the solutions have to really reinvent the entire worlds of business and government–I do think the lifestyle choices, the changes we make in the ways we are on this planet, should not be trivialized or dismissed.
Via Robert Hubbell’s always-optimistic Today’s Edition newsletter, which I read before breakfast every weekday morning. Hubbell is a champion of the Democrats and far more centrist than I am. But I love that he is always a cheerleader for what went right and a strong advocate of the need to keep organizing and working for change when things don’t go according to our wishes.
It is very unfortunate that the original developer didn’t get any guarantees that a buyer would maintain the fossil-free commitment written into the sale documents. Nonetheless, I think a creative and skilled attorney could make a number of different legal arguments that could force the developer to honor the agreement. Could the Environmental Defense Fund? perhaps take this on? It would be a great precedent to say that a community developed specifically as an eco-community could not then be put at the mercy of eco-hostile development.
As a non-lawyer, all I can do is speculate about the arguments a lawyer might use to block the conversion of the acquired parcels to fossil fuels (I have no idea if any of these would hold up in court and I am not presenting this as legal advice). Arguments could be made about such harms as
Introducing new health risks (especially to children)
Negative progress on climate that goes against International, US,Colorado, and neighborhood climate goals
Adverse possession (a doctrine that gives rights to squatters in certain circumstances)
The deliberate destruction of a cohesive intentional community
And of course, about consumers’ rights: this could clearly be seen as bait-and-switch: buying into a community with a stated purpose, and having that purpose violated, even shredded.
But the courts aren’t the only recourse. I do know something about organizing movements, and these neighbors should be organizing a movement. To list a few among many possibilities, they could be:
Organizing mass protests outside the developer’s office
Saturating the local paper with letters to the editor and op-eds
Enlisting allies in powerful environmental organizations, of which Colorado has no shortage
Protesting at the capital in Denver that their rights are being taken away
Contacting the press ahead of and after all of these events
Physically but nonviolently blocking attempts to connect the pipelines (note: this is illegal civil disobedience and participants might be subject to arrest)
Researching obscure laws that might provide tools that can successfully block the connection
Organizing boycotts and other public shamings of the developer
Plus, I really have to wonder what the developer is thinking. Eco-friendly homes are in high demand, can often sell for more than the price of comparable fossil-powered homes, and prove a skill set that many homeowners want. After all, people moved from other states just to participate in this community. And forcing eco-hostile housing development into an eco-friendly community is a recipe for public relations disaster and a bad, bad reputation.
Why not simply stop, think about the benefits of keeping this community identity, and use it as a marketing tool? That would make so much more sense than risking ongoing hostility, a ruined reputation and possibly much worse.
I don’t typically get to play detective—but one recent morning, I received a priority morning FedEx delivery containing a check for just under $6K from a company I’d never heard of. No note. No trace of this company or even the dollar amount when I searched my email. Some other red flags, too, like a total mismatch of sender and company (different states), the misspelling of the bank’s name and the absence of any branch address—although it had several security features that seemed to check out.
Having trained as a journalist and been online since 1994 (not counting a brief experiment with Compuserve in 1987), I have pretty decent research skills. So the first thing I did was call the phone number on the check, where I got a recording about the “text subscriber” not being available (not a company phone, in other words). Second, I googled the bank routing number, which came up empty—so I flipped it around, searched for the routing number for this bank’s Pennsylvania branches, and got a match. I was expecting it to be the group of numbers on the left, but it was the middle set, which is why I didn’t find it the first time. Next, I searched for the company name. It’s a real company, it’s in the green energy industry, and it is located where it says on the check. And then I left a voicemail for the accounting department.
The company controller called me back about two minutes later, confirmed that the check was bogus, and was thrilled that I was willing to send pictures of the check and the FedEx envelope. She said it was the second call like this she’d received today. So, hopefully, we’re catching a crook. It was actually kind of fun, and not hugely time-consuming. Plus, since I’m a consultant to green and socially conscious businesses, I mentioned that I’d be happy to send information on how I help companies like hers, if she wanted to pass it on to her marketing people—and in her thank-you note, she mentioned that she’d passed the correspondence to the company president. It would be such sweet irony if this ended up netting me a real client.
And later in the day, I got a note from someone who had been in discussion with me about writing an article—and with whom I was treading cautiously (including requesting payment ahead in full via teller’s check) because there were definitely some yellow flags in his correspondence. It was the scammer! So I wrote back to him, “I only received the check this morning with no note, drawn on the account of a company I’d never heard of, and for an amount almost triple what I had requested. I didn’t even know it was from you until just now (there was a sticker over the return address so I couldn’t see it until I pulled it off). The phone number on the check was bogus, so I called the company, and they said the check was bogus as well. Needless to say, we will not be doing business.” And then I forwarded the entire email correspondence to the company whose check he forged! Now, the company has the phone number the sender gave FedEx, the one on the check, and the crook’s working email address. I’m hanging on to the original check and envelope for now, in case they are needed for a mail fraud case.
This shortcuts the typical interaction, where scammers say they accidentally overpaid, you refund the difference, and then you’re out of luck when the first check bounces :-).
I still believe that most people are basically good—but there are enough bad apples in there that you really do have to be careful. When I punch my security code into an ATM or card terminal, I always shield the keyboard with my other hand. My passwords are not guessable and the cheat sheet I’ve made for them not only uses a non-obvious file name but has nicknames that are only meaningful to me. I will instantly understand what “1stdaupobhse” means, but it would be meaningless to anyone else. And I keep a virus scanner on my computer, as well as file backup to the cloud. And when I get a Facebook friend request from someone who is already my friend, I post publicly on their timeline to warn people, give the URL of the scam profile, and suggest they change their password and report the scammer. In rare instances, it turns out the person found it easier to start a new profile than to get a new password for the existing one (yes, I have some seriously technophobic friends)–but usually, it’s an attempt at identity theft.
In short, we can all take little steps to ensure security and make us all safer, without getting compulsive about it. If you’re still using any passwords that are really easy to guess, change them! And if you’re suspicious, listen to your intuition and take some basic precautions. Don’t send money or give cc information to anyone who contacts you by phone or email with a crazy story (like your grandkid is stranded in a foreign country with no money). If someone claims to be from a government agency (especially a tax department), verify by calling the agency through the number on their official website (NOT a number they give you over the phone or in an email). Don’t panic and do verify. If you get the “grandkid” call, call your grandkid’s cell phone, and if you don’t get an answer, call their parents. And remember: a foreign prince doesn’t need your help to facilitate an illegal money transfer, an award that requires you to pay anything is not an award but a scam, and if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Snopes and Google are your friends. So is AARP’s fraud research, if you’re a member. A little due diligence can save a lot of heartache.
This is not a coincidence; Gil sent the link to Joel’s article around before the call to everyone who registered for it.
I found the article provocative enough that I posted this comment (and the Living Between Worlds open discussion was so fascinating that I plan to listen again once the video is available):
Good piece, Joel. You’ll be glad to know Gil Friend @gfriend kept his promise to discuss this topic in the monthly “Living Between Worlds” brain trust Zoom.
I come at systemic change through a lifetime of weaving together my two “split personalities” as both a marketer specializing in green and social change companies/products/services and as an environmental, social justice, and peace activist whose credits include starting the movement that saved a threatened local mountain.
Through the nonviolent social change lens of people like George Lakey and Erica Chenoweth, I look at institutional structures: how they prop up the system, create major barriers to change, and ultimately fail because they fail to change–and where they are weak and shaky and vulnerable. Sometimes they collapse with surprising speed (think about the Arab Spring a decade ago, or the government of Afghanistan just in the last ten days. Sometimes, it takes decades. The Quakers targeted slavery for about a century before it was illegalized.
But the marketer in me says systemic change is far more likely to succeed if the effort was made to change popular opinion first. The US civil rights movement created the opinion shift that made civil rights legislation not only possible but enforceable. Opposition to the Vietnam war was strong enough that LBJ felt a need to withdraw from his re-election campaign, years before the troops finally came home. And when we did Save the Mountain here in Western Massachusetts 21 years ago, our first task was to change the “this is terrible, but there’s nothing we can do” mentality. Once we shifted that, the victory was very quick.
The owner of the Step Into the Spotlight discussion group, Tsufit, asked what kind of marketing could help Canada go smoke-free by 2035. My answer doesn’t fit into LinkedIn’s comment space, so I’m sharing it here:
Ooooh, what a wonderful project! If I might make some cross-border observations that an actual Canadian might find lacking, I would, first of all, identify the key attributes of not just each province but each region of each province and target different themes and different platforms that will work will for each. I’d remember the wild successes on my side of the border of “Don’t Mess With Texas”–which started as an anti-littering campaign and became an unofficial state slogan and a core part of Texans’ identity–and the “I Love New York” campaign that helped the Big Apple find its way from near-depression in the 1970s to, once again, the happening place that “everyone” wants to be part of–and then the state successfully expanded the campaign to talk about all the other parts of New York State.
In libertarian rural Alberta, it might be about the personal freedom to enjoy clean, smoke-free air and the desire to keep out of the clutches of National Health Service doctors by staying healthy. For Quebec City, ads (in French, of course) that might make Anglophone Canadians choke but appeal to the sense of separate identity, e.g., “Oui, we are a beautiful capital city–but we also want to be the capital of good health and clean air.” In a more rural part of Quebec, such as the Gaspésie, they might tout the health benefits of the rural lifestyle, fresh food, and clean lungs.
In the Inuit areas, it might focus on communitarianism, tribal values, etc. For the Metro Toronto and Vancouver markets, perhaps an appeal to cosmopolitan sophistication. “Thinking of smoking as cool is SO 1950s. We’re too smart for that now.”
This national effort of a series of hyperlocal campaigns would need people on the ground in each area to really figure out the touchpoints for each audience slice. And it would be across many media, from traditional TV and print and radio to Instagram, TikTok, etc.
AND it would include a significant curriculum component starting around 3rd grade, to build the defenses of rising generations against tobacco industry hype, to inoculate students with the knowledge of health, economic, and pollution/carbon consequences, and to foster development of healthy lifestyles and a different set of pleasures.
Here’s a true incident from my teenage college years. I made a mild request to a group of people and one of my dorm-mates lit into me about how I was always so selfish and didn’t care about other people. It hurt like hell to hear this–but I reflected on it and decided that he had a point. So I changed my behavior. Decades later, I saw him at a reunion and thanked him. He had no memory of the incident, but to me it was a key turning point.
Criticism usually has a grain of truth (or sometimes a bushel)–so start by expressing thanks, even if it’s delivered nastily. Especially, then, because listening and appreciating is the only way you’re going to get into a positive outcome with someone who’s hostile. Listen, let them get their feelings out, acknowledge their feelings, meaningfully apologize for your action if that’s appropriate. And even if you don’t feel a need to apologize for the behavior or policy, apologize for upsetting them or making them feel unvalued. Don’t try to explain or justify your action yet. Just listen.And whatever you do, don’t say, “I’m sorry, but…”–that’s not an apology. Keep an ear out for the opportunity to take a specific step that will help, and offer, out loud, to take that step. That might just be informing them ahead the next time, or it might be completely undoing an action. You have to decide how much of the criticism is justified and figure out what the real issue is (which may not be the expressed issue).
Once the other person is done venting and you’ve apologized or de-escalated, you might (but might not) want to ask, “would you like to know why I did it that way? Maybe we could think together about how I could do it differently next time so both of our needs get met.” With this, you make them a partner in your growth, and you increase the likelihood of finding a viable solution for both of you, building a relationship of cooperation, not hostility. But you’re really asking. if they decline, drop it. They don’t want to be your partner in potentially changing their behavior, or maybe they are just tired of doing the work of educating others on an issue that is a sore spot for them.
Abundance thinking applies not just to stuff or lifestyle, but to relationships. This is a strategy to create abundance by welcoming even the nay-sayers. Not only do you get to build a relationship, you discover flaws in your thinking, planning, and action that you might not have seen and can now work around. Who knows–maybe your critics will even become your friends or your business partners.
The sponsoring City Councilor is someone I know, and I wrote her this note:
Thanks for your good work on the plastics ordinance. As you know, I’ve been a green guy for 50 years, write books and give talks on greening business. One of my talks is called “Making Green Sexy.” Thus, the concerns I have with the plastics bill you’re championing are not about the intent. I would like to see potential problems addressed before it becomes law–so we avoid a debacle like the one we just had over the Main Street improvements (which I loved) and their sad, swift demise).
My big concern is that “recyclable” food containers aren’t recyclable, because paper and cardboard with food waste is not recyclable. We already know we’re not supposed to recycle pizza boxes. Any food waste in paper for recycling could cause the whole batch (potentially thousands of pounds) to be landfilled. It would make more sense to 1) require compostable, and 2) provide city composting stations in several neighborhoods as well as multiple ones downtown. It makes no sense to require compostable and do nothing to encourage composting. Many people will eat their food while still downtown and won’t be bothered to bring their compostable containers to their home compost pile or may not have access to composting at home.
Second, on the straw issue [banning plastic drinking straws]. Why not simply make an exemption for people with motor disabilities in their arms or mouth. For most businesses, a box of 100 plastic straws would probably last months.
Please share this note with your committee at today’s meeting.
We see over and over again that good intentions, not thought through, create more problems than they solve. The Main Street issue involved the city making its extremely wide Main Street much friendlier to bicyclists, pedestrians, and patrons of restaurant outdoor dining areas (which, in the pandemic, have increased in number tremendously)—but failing to get buy-in from (or even consult with) affected business owners, who agitated successfully, and the mayor removed all the improvements. This was sad, as a better situation returned to a worse one, wasting significant money in the process.
In my mind, the lesson was to think things through before acting.
I got this response, which shows that the councilors are indeed thinking about these issues:
Hi Shel- thanks for your support and counsel! Straws for those with disabilities are exempt. We are requiring reusable or compostable and are working on composting services and bulk buying.
Which then says to me that they’ve got a marketing challenge. The general public doesn’t know about this exemption. They also had a marketing challenge with the Main Street improvements. Getting affected parties to participate in decisions that affect them is always a good strategy. Putting in improvements only to discover that vested interests will fight them is not. The trick is to win over those vested interests before they dig in their heels.
Wall Street bull statue Creator: Sam Valadi Credit: ZUMAPRESS.com/Newscom Copyright: via ZUMA Wire
A friend–my ex-boss, in fact–sent me this article on how 30 billionaires had vastly increased their wealth during the pandemic.
I wrote back:
While this is a good tool for generating outrage, it’s not where I will put my own energy. First, because I think one of the mistakes the Left makes is to try to divide ourselves to the super-rich and make them targets. Much more productive IMHO to work with them, make them allies, to fund necessary research and actions (as several of these people are cited as doing).
Second, to work for a tax structure that helps redistribute toward those in need. Harness the class anger toward this, rather than generating enmity toward people who we make less likely to do the right thing by shaming them and having demonstrations at their offices. Guilt and shame are lousy motivators. Let’s find ways to honor their virtue rather than shame their success.
On that second point, it would not be hard to find one-percenters who would join and be a public face for that movement. Many multimillionaires and even a few billionaires have come out for income equality, offered to pay higher taxes, donated much of their fortunes, subsidized social change movements. Do the names Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, or George Soros ring any bells?
I have a relatively modest 5-figure income, but I travel in circles where a lot of people have seven- or eight-figure annual incomes. My life is full of abundance and blessings, and I don’t begrudge them their wealth. I do begrudge those who push for corporate welfare policies that penalize the poor while adding unnecessary zeroes at the end of their own already large bank balances–people whose goal in life seems to be transferring as much wealth as possible from the poor to the super-rich. And I don’t believe those few people, powerful though they are, represent the majority of the one percent.
In fact, I believe that smart corporations recognize that labor and consumers are partners in their success who deserve to share in the wealth they help create. They embrace social responsibility, partner actively with neighborhood groups, and grow their businesses by finding ways to serve.
But there’s an element on the left that sees wealth as inherently evil, and the wealthy as always the enemy.
I remember when a philanthropist and peace activist I know lost her house in a fire. Some of the public comments on the news stories were not only not compassionate, they were downright vicious: how dare she accumulate wealth and live in a mansion?
Well, sorry, but making her the enemy is just plain stupid. She’s an activist and philanthropist who chooses to use her money for good. And even if she were totally selfish, she still wouldn’t be the enemy. Rich or poor, we all want dignity and respect. And when we pigeonhole her as an enemy, what we do is alienate not just her but others in her cohort. So non-activist wealthy people who might have funded our causes are instead pushed into the arms of those who proclaim respect for the wealthy. If their politics are not strong, they may even choose to fund causes that actively defend their privilege.
WordPress is not letting me link properly, so here are the sources:
Billionaires who got richer during the pandemic: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/12/01/american-billionaires-that-got-richer-during-covid/43205617/
Public face: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/31/what-billionaires-said-about-wealth-inequality-and-capitalism-in-2019.html
Penalize the poor https://talkpoverty.org/2014/10/07/punished-for-being-poor/ . For a specific discussion of the subsidy wealtheir people get from low-paid immigrant labor, https://www.stltoday.com/opinion/mailbag/underpaid-immigrants-help-poor-subsidize-the-rich/article_2f1d8094-9700-5f8b-8d38-562fd75a7657.html
Donated their fortunes: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/warren-buffett-donates-2-9-billion-to-gates-foundation-family-charities/ar-BB16u7tr
